A Poetic Historiography of the Early English Settlements

Zooming in to consider how the ambitions of Jones’s project are realized in the individual poetic sequences that make up The Anathemata, Chapter 3 engages in a close reading of the third sequence of The Anathemata, ‘Angle-Land’. ‘Angle-Land’ focuses on the arrival of the Angles, Saxons, and the Jutes to Britain and the extent of the subsequent cultural change in the fifth century and beyond. This chapter argues that in ‘Angle-Land’ Jones uses aspects of the physical and cultural geography of Britain, in particular evidence from toponymy, to write a poetic historiography of the early English settlements that challenges the idea that the migration of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes rapidly transformed the landscape and culture of Britain. By exploring the language of landscape, Jones writes a poetic historiography that is in tune with contemporary, emerging historiographical narratives.